


Exposure

by miuyi (rainiest)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-10 17:03:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15953708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainiest/pseuds/miuyi
Summary: If Baekhyun wanted the sun out of his eyes then he'd stop standing in it all the goddamn time.





	Exposure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [baeksdoodle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/baeksdoodle/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Prince...](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15035243) by [baeksdoodle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/baeksdoodle/pseuds/baeksdoodle). 



> Dear baeksdoodle: I'm really happy I got the opportunity to remix this adorable work. I was intrigued by how the memory of that afternoon might play on the mind of that same little kid Baekhyun in adulthood. Sometimes you might have to squint to catch the echoes of the original but I hope you enjoy reading it nonetheless!
> 
> On a more personal note, I'm very grateful that the opportunity to write something like this came up. It gave me a chance to put into words something important I've been trying to remind myself of lately. Thank you as always to the mods for running this event!

Today Baekhyun is calculating sheets of glass. Six-hundred and thirty-two panes of shatterproof double-glazed, and that’s just for the windows. There’s also doors and balcony railings and whatever other shit is in luxury apartments these days.

At the bench Jongdae is making pasta from scratch. He sings while he cooks and it’s distracting but they’re not roommates anymore. This is Jongdae’s apartment, not theirs, so Baekhyun can’t tell him to shut up.

He closes his laptop, takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “I feel like I’m forgetting something.”

“Did you carry the one?” Jongdae suggests. “A negative times a positive is a negative.”

“Not work stuff.” Baekhyun pushes the notepad covered in numbers away from him. It’s making his head swim. “Like, something from my life.”

“It’s your mom’s birthday,” Jongdae says. “You left the oven on.”

Baekhyun checks the date on his phone. “Nope. And I haven’t touched an oven since 2010.”

Jongdae finishes laying out the strands of fettuccine to one side. He’s not wearing an apron but somehow that makes it even worse. The rolled up shirtsleeves and flour-covered palms scream working dad. Right now he just likes cooking and being nice to his wife but if he keeps making her homemade pasta then it won’t be long at all, and Baekhyun truly won’t be able to impose himself anymore once they have a kid.

“You’re meant to be at a date right now. Or a doctor’s appointment.” Jongdae turns to check on the boiling water. “A date with a doctor?”

“Is this your way of reminding me to get my prostate checked?” asks Baekhyun.

Jongdae laughs. He doesn't turn around but he waves his spoon in Baekhyun’s general direction. “Only because I care, buddy.”

Baekhyun rests his chin in his hand. “We should go together. Boys’ day out.” 

Jongdae is back at the bench. “If I hadn’t just spent an hour making it I’d throw this pasta at you,” he promises. 

Baekhyun shifts his head so his smile is hidden by his hand. Jongdae turns away again to drop his pasta in the water, and Baekhyun’s eyes go unfocused somewhere around his back.

“I think it’s something from a long time ago.” His voice is muffled into his palm but Jongdae is still listening. “Like I left the oven on in 2010 and the kitchen’s been burning since.”

“It’d just be ash by now. The whole house.” Jongdae opens the fridge and holds it open with his knee so he can stare down at the contents. “Beer? It’s that or Sunyoung’s weird green juice.”

“Beer’s fine, thanks.” Jongdae slides it to him across the counter. The condensation makes flour stick to the bottom.

“Well, nothing’s on fire.” Jongdae cracks open his beer. “So it can’t have been anything too important, right?” The sound of a key turning in the lock comes just as Jongdae takes his first mouthful. He leaves his can on the counter and brushes his hands off on his pants, leaving patches of flour, as he goes into the hall.

“I guess not,” Baekhyun murmurs. The water on the stove bubbles away in reply.

 

 

 

Sometimes when he needs to figure things out, Baekhyun imagines a darkroom.

Right now it’s empty. The tabletops and walls are clear and his footsteps echo on the linoleum. The acute stillness and deep red light give him this weird bottomless feeling, like he’s suspended inside a ruby. 

Over on the workbench sits a little canister of film, waiting to be developed. Baekhyun rolls up his sleeves and begins.

 

 

 

For a while there they’d all thought it would be Baekhyun getting married first. This was back when they’d just graduated high school and Baekhyun was considering delaying his enlistment.

“Just for a couple years,” he said. “I can find a job for a bit, or maybe start a degree.”

Taeyeon stopped walking. It took Baekhyun several steps to realise she wasn’t beside him anymore, and when he turned she was frowning at the pavement.

“I think you should go,” she said finally.

Baekhyun walked back towards her. “You think so? I guess I could. I’ll have to eventually anyway.”

“No,” she said, “I mean…” It was a warm night. Baekhyun could feel the sweat on the back of his neck. A bird rustled the leaves in a treetop nearby and then called out once, a mournful waterfall of notes. “You remember those video auditions I did a few months ago?”

So Kim Taeyeon, whom Baekhyun had been in love with since he was fourteen, moved to London to attend a prestigious music academy while Baekhyun enlisted in the Korean army and tried to move on with his life. 

Even now, eight years later, he still can’t quite shake that image out of his mind: of the person he thought he’d be with forever standing so still in the yellow streetlights, trying to work up the courage to break his heart. He’s starting to think things like that never do leave.

 

 

 

Lately Baekhyun has been wondering if he’s seeing things. It’s never anything big– just sometimes he’ll be at his desk or waiting for his train and he’ll catch this flicker at the edge of his vision, superhuman fast. He turns to follow it but there’s never anything there, and it’s not until his train comes or someone calls his name that he stops staring.

He hears things too. He’ll be alone in his apartment and catch the faintest suggestion of a song. It only ever seems to be the ending, notes spilling down into a resolution. He put it down to a neighbour singing in the shower and didn’t think anything of it until he started hearing that same stumbling cadence when he was out on the street.

There was this dream he had last night. He doesn’t remember the details, all he remembers is a horizon. Baekhyun knew, with that fierce conviction that only seems to exist in dreams, that there was something important over that horizon. It wasn’t until the next day that he even remembered the dream at all, after he caught himself staring at the sky, waiting.

 

 

 

In university Baekhyun had it in his head that all he needed to do was meet the right girl. He thought once he did then that cruel, hopeful part of him would finally stop waiting for Taeyeon to walk in, kiss his cheek and say, “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

Zhang Yixing wasn’t a girl and he didn’t erase Taeyeon, but he was still probably the person Baekhyun was looking for.

They did this thing once, it must’ve been their final year because they were in the apartment Baekhyun and Jongdae moved out into, where they listed everything they were scared of. Yixing started and said something like “Showing up for an afternoon exam and realising it was that morning.”

And Baekhyun said something equally stupid like “Getting explosive diarrhea in public,” and they went on like that for a while until Yixing blurted out, “Never amounting to anything,” and suddenly neither of them were laughing anymore.

Baekhyun didn’t know what to say. Yixing wasn’t looking for an answer but Baekhyun couldn’t just let that one go. 

“That’s impossible,” he said eventually, which was the closest he could get to saying what he really meant. 

Yixing didn’t reply or look up from his lap but he let his hand fall to one side so his fingertips were resting on Baekhyun’s ankle, his lips pressed together in this little almost-smile. The late afternoon sun was blazing into the room. It cut a sharp line across Yixing’s shoulders and picked up the browns in his dyed hair. It was then, looking at him sitting there, cross-legged in his t-shirt and boxers at the foot of the bed, that Baekhyun realised that he was probably a little bit in love with him.

“I think…” Baekhyun said, mouth dry. “I think I’m scared of memories.”

Yixing did look up at this. He squinted through the light in his eyes. “Memories?”

“Yeah, and not even the bad ones. It’s the good ones that really get me.” Baekhyun picked at a scab on the back of his hand. Yixing smacked his ankle to make him stop. “They never leave, you know? You carry them everywhere, like your own pet ghosts.”

“But see that’s the thing with ghosts,” Yixing said. “They’re just people who aren’t here anymore. Same with memories, especially the good ones.” Yixing’s fingers wrapped around his ankle, ice-cold even though it was only October. “So the real question is: are you scared of making memories or are you just scared to be left behind when it’s done?”

“Oh,” Baekhyun said. He let his head fall back against the wall. “Yeah, okay. Jesus christ.”

Yixing’s eyes gained a little extra fire behind the sunlight. He rolled onto his knees and crawled over Baekhyun’s legs so he was right up in his face. “You gonna be scared of my memory one day, Baekhyun?” 

“I’m scared of you now,” is what Baekhyun said, but in the half-second before Yixing dropped his head to scrape his teeth across Baekhyun’s neck he was this close to admitting, _Yes, absolutely_.

 

 

 

Irene was an ornithologist and a falconer which, before even factoring in her face, made her way too cool to hang out with Baekhyun, who screams when a pigeon flies too low.

“You know,” she said, eyebrow raised and mouth hinting at a smile, “that’s not actually my name.”

Her name was actually Joohyun. Irene was the name she wore pinned to her chest in blocky English letters at work. This was also where Baekhyun first saw her, speaking precisely into a headset mic as a bird with a wingspan two-thirds her height swooped low over a crowd and, with a great gust that threw her dark hair everywhere, came to perch neatly on her forearm. 

To Baekhyun, who had just spent an hour falling asleep in the aquarium, she looked like some ancient goddess or an all-powerful witch or, at the very least, someone who knew a lot about birds.

“What gave me away?” she said, when Baekhyun walked up to her after the display and asked her, in Korean, when she finished her shift.

“Your _f_ s,” Baekhyun said. “They turn into _p_ s when you’re distracted by the birds.”

“Huh.” She locked the cage of the peregrine falcon behind her and actually looked at him for the first time. “Five,” she said, after staring for a solid moment. “That’s when my last show finishes.”

Joohyun was a Daegu girl who was dragged to California when she was fifteen to follow her father’s career in IT. For a few years she cultivated a spectacular teenage rebellion until she discovered bird-watching, and she’s barely looked away from the skies since.

When Baekhyun met her, two weeks into his solo trip across America after graduating with his architecture degree, she was twenty-seven and always covered her mouth when she laughed. She brought him to a quiet italian place and for the first time he doesn’t need to Google translate the entire menu.

“It’s kinda blurry, sorry,” Baekhyun said. She leaned across the table to get a better look at his phone screen.

She squinted at the picture. “You took this in Korea?”

“Yep. I saw one when I was in Arizona too but it flew away before I could get a photo.” 

Joohyun looked up at him then back down at the screen, her brow creased. “You’re not messing with me, are you?” Baekhyun shook his head. She sat back into her chair and Baekhyun took his phone back. “That’s very strange.”

“Why? Are they super rare or something?”

“Not exactly,” Joohyun said. “That’s a yellow-billed kingfisher. They’re actually very common where they’re native—but that’s the thing. They’re only found in Papua New Guinea and the very northern tip of Australia. I don’t know what one would be doing up in Korea, let alone all the way across the Pacific.”

Baekhyun looked down at the picture on his phone. The bird was squat and solid with a long beak. It was perched in a lower branch of a tree. Baekhyun mightn’t even have noticed it as he walked by on his way home from work if it weren’t for the blazing yellow that stretched from beak to collar, like a crown.

“That certainly is strange,” he said.

“They must’ve escaped captivity,” Joohyun said. “Two of them, on opposite sides of the world. You just happened to run into them both.” There was still a frown in the tilt of her eyebrows. “What odds, right?”

“Right,” Baekhyun echoed. He stared at the bird for one more moment then turned his phone face-down onto the table.

Once they finished dessert, she asked if there was anyone waiting for him back in Seoul.

“No,” he said, gathering the condensation from his glass on his finger and using it to paint patterns on the tablecloth. “There’s… no, nothing like that.”

“I see.” Joohyun said. Baekhyun watched splotches of water soak through to the wood. “I’m divorced,” she supplied into the silence. “He cheated on me.”

“Oh,” Baekhyun said, looking up, “that’s… I’m–”

“Don’t be,” she said, not a shred of hesitation in her voice. “I’m not even sorry anymore.” She pushed the ice cubes a slow, hypnotic revolution around her glass with her straw. “He was an entomologist. After a while I realised people like him exist to be eaten by people like me.”

They stayed until closing and then walked to her apartment a handful of blocks away. It was chilly and there was a breeze. Joohyun’s long black coat swallowed her whole when she pulled it around her to fend off the wind.

“What would you say if I asked if I could stay tonight?” Baekhyun asked. Joohyun laughed even as the street lights reflected off something in her eyes made of steel.

“Yes, probably.” Joohyun tilted her head. “But you’re not gonna ask, are you?”

Of course Baekhyun wanted to sleep with her. Joohyun was beautiful and thoughtful and very smart. They’d only met twelve hours previously but Baekhyun already really, really liked her, and he didn’t think it was anything to do with her being the only person he’d held a full, face-to-face conversation with in two weeks. 

That might’ve been exactly the problem: Baekhyun liked her. He didn’t want to fuck her once in a foreign city and never see her again. He wanted her to live twenty minutes by train from his apartment in Seoul. He wanted to meet up with her after work and stay out late even though they both had to be up early the next day. He wanted to sleep with her and not have to say goodbye for good in the morning.

“You see?” Joohyun said. Baekhyun hated that somehow she’d already known what he wanted before he knew himself, because the next afternoon he was crossing the state line on a highway bus and he probably wouldn't ever be back.

Baekhyun swallowed hard. “If you’re ever in Seoul…” 

Joohyun stepped forward and cupped his face in her small hands. Baekhyun thought she was going to kiss him but instead she pulled him down so she could press her lips to his forehead.

“I know,” she said, pulling away. She stepped up to her front door. “Good night, Baekhyun.”

Jongdae answered on the fourth ring. “Baekhyun? Good timing, it’s intermission. What time is it over there?”

“Two in the morning.” Baekhyun rolled over onto his back, legs twisted in the blanket. “I met a girl.”

Jongdae laughed, staccato over the phone. There was a lot of chatter in the background. “Are we calling each other to announce it every time we get laid now? You know I’m engaged right? Don’t start something you can’t finish.”

“No, we… we just talked.” Baekhyun picked at a patch of dry skin on his chest. “She knew a lot about birds. It was really cool.” 

“Wait, you didn’t…” The background noise faded like Jongdae was walking away from the crowd. “You just went back home alone?”

“Uh huh. Her ex-husband cheated on her.” If Baekhyun scratched at his skin any longer he was going to draw blood. He dropped his hand to the sheets. “I think I hate him.” 

“Whoa, hey,” Jongdae said. “Is everything okay?” Baekhyun heard the intermission bell ring. Sunyoung’s distant voice said, _Babe c’mon, we gotta go back in_ and Jongdae’s voice, much closer, replied, “Wait, wait a sec.”

“Actually, I think I’m good,” Baekhyun said. “You enjoy the show.”

“Baekhyun if you need–”

“No seriously,” he said. He was still thinking about Joohyun but he was also thinking about other things, like falling asleep mid-movie on the couch at Jongdae and Sunyoung’s and waking up the next morning under a blanket to Jongdae brewing coffee a few steps away. He was thinking of Kyungsoo who’d be back from his internship in Sweden soon, and of all-nighters by the piano at Chanyeol’s. “I’m good.”

“If you’re sure,” Jongdae said, sounding uncertain.

Baekhyun rolled over again, onto his stomach. The ear without the phone pressed to it was buried in the pillow. Baekhyun could hear his own pulse throbbing like a little echo chamber for his heart. “I’m sure. Go on.”

 

 

 

The sky looks like a painting tonight. Like the clouds have each taken a shard of the sun captive and it’s trying to shine its way out, shades of grey and yellow.

Baekhyun stares at it through the window for so long that a woman in her work suit has to clear her throat so he’ll stop blocking the apples.

On the way home he calls Baekbeom. Summer has just loosened its grip on Seoul and there’s a cool dusk breeze slipping through the streets.

“You remember that park?” Baekhyun asks. “I used to wait there for you to finish. Before we moved schools.”

“Yeah,” Baekbeom says. He can distinctly hear Doraemon on the TV in the background. “What about it?”

Baekhyun’s arm is aching from his grocery bags. He holds his phone with his shoulder and switches them to the other hand. “I don’t know. I’ve just had this weird feeling lately that I’ve forgotten something important. Something from a long time ago.”

Baekbeom laughs. “Dude, you were eleven. How important could it possibly have been?” Sohee makes a little sound and Baekbeom switches to his baby voice. “Your uncle Baekhyun’s silly, isn’t he?” 

“That’s what Jongdae said. I dunno, though, it’s like–” Baekhyun dodges around a trio of high school girls who are looking at something on the middle girl’s phone instead of where they’re going. “Y’know when you hear a song you haven’t heard for years and years? But you hear it once and suddenly you start hearing it everywhere, like it's following you around.”

Baekbeom hums. “Except there’s no song?”

“No song,” Baekhyun confirms. “Only–” A bush at the edge of the footpath rustles. Baekhyun stops walking. The bush shivers again then goes still. “Sorry, can I call you back?”

He hangs up without waiting for an answer. He inches closer to the bush, trying to tread lightly. The leaves are twitching, casting elongated shadows on the pavement.

Baekhyun hears the gust of wind first. It whistles past the buildings up the street and a moment later it’s pressing at his clothes and shaking the plastic of his shopping bags. The bush ripples under the weight of it and a bird bursts from it with a shrill cry. A slash of yellow and black crosses Baekhyun’s path faster than his eyes can follow and disappears over a rooftop across the street.

Baekhyun stares at the place in the dimming dusk sky where the kingfisher vanished as the wind fades to a whisper. Beneath the fabric of his pants, his knee begins to sting.

 

 

 

He’s finished now. The prints have dried and are hanging up on a line of string above the workbench. There were only a handful on this roll of film. Baekhyun reaches out to pluck the first sheet from the line. His own hands look smooth and alien in the scarlet wash of the light.

This is from a long time ago. The image is a little blurry and bleeding at the edges but Taeyeon at the very centre is in sharp focus. She’s sitting cross-legged on a bench at their high school, sideways so she can face him. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail and she has a sachet of drinking yoghurt in one hand. 

There must be hundreds of days like this in Baekhyun’s memory; just the two of them killing time together before they had to go to opposite sides of the city, Taeyeon for voice lessons and Baekhyun for tutoring. In those days time had seemed viscous and infinite, like in twenty years they’d still be walking those same streets in those same uniforms with nothing to do except be together. Looking back now Baekhyun can see it for what it was, like walking through a waterfall that froze behind them. It felt like forever while it was coming down all around them but in reality it only lasted a moment, and once it was over they were left shivering with no way back.

Taeyeon in the photo isn’t looking at Baekhyun and she’s not exactly smiling but she looks content. He holds the print close and moves to the next one on the line.

This one is far more recent. Joohyun is sitting across from him at a picnic table at the zoo where she works. She’s wearing her employee polo t-shirt but she’s taken off the thick armguards. There are faded scars thatched over her forearms from learning to handle birds of prey. It was then that Baekhyun decided she might be the single coolest person he’s ever met.

He’d just asked her if she’d ever lost a bird. If they ever just soared away into the sky and refused to come back when she called.

“Yeah,” she said. She leaned forward, idly fingering a particularly deep scar across her wrist. “But she came back eventually. They always do.”

And the third: sitting beside Yixing at the airport before his flight time to China, both of them watching the clock for the time when Yixing would have to go into the international terminal where Baekhyun couldn’t follow.

“You actually learn anything in the past four years?” Baekhyun asked. Yixing and his shiny degree in Musical Composition were heading home to try their luck in the Chinese market.

Yixing snorted. “Not really.” Jets on the runway caught the light on their way in and out. “Alright, how about this: timing is everything.” Yixing bit his lip. “Even the most perfect progression of notes won’t work if the timing is off.”

Baekhyun forced a laugh so he wouldn’t cry. “Why do I get the feeling you aren’t just talking about music?”

Yixing’s mouth twisted into a smile. He looked a little like he might cry too. “What’d you learn then, architecture man?”

Baekhyun looks down at their legs, the toe of Yixing’s shoe just nudging Baekhyun’s, then up out the big glass windows. “To always look for the light.”

The final photo Baekhyun doesn’t recognise– then again maybe he does, but just barely.

It’s dusk and a lone silhouette is walking on a street. Purple shadows fall over the buildings so Baekhyun can’t make out any of them, nor the face of the person. He can’t even tell if they’re walking closer or away. Over the person’s shoulder is the dark blur of a bird, crossing the distant sky like a comet.

Baekhyun pulls all the images from the string. Part of him wants nothing more than to stay in here and look at them forever. Another part wants to rummage through the cupboards for anything that’ll catch and watch the colours warp and blacken as they burn. Really though, there’s only one thing to be done with pictures like these.

Baekhyun opens the drawer beneath the workbench and slides them inside for safekeeping, with all the other dozens of photos he’s developed over the years. And then he slips out of the room and closes the door quietly behind him.

 

 

 

“You’re in a good mood today,” Jongdae comments.

Baekhyun is. It’s a Saturday and he’s having a pity lunch-date with Jongdae because Sunyoung is in Jeju-do with her friends and Jongdae kept casually dropping that he’d be free all weekend, if Baekhyun wanted to hang out or whatever.

“It’s a beautiful day,” Baekhyun says. “What’s there to be unhappy about?”

“Rising sea-levels,” says Jongdae. “The state of politics.” Baekhyun laughs. “Seriously though, I’m glad. You’ve been all–” Jongdae does a weird little movement with his hands, “–thoughtful lately. It was strange.”

“Hey, screw you.” Baekhyun tries to kick him under the table but stubs his toe on the chair leg instead and fights to keep a straight face so Jongdae won’t get the satisfaction. “I can think.”

“Yeah,” Jongdae says, stirring his drink so quickly it almost overflows, “but not like that. Did you remember whatever it was that you forgot?”

Baekhyun shrugs. “Nah. It’ll come to me.” He leans back in his chair and folds his empty sugar sachet in half. “And if it doesn’t something else will.”

Jongdae raises his eyebrows almost like he’s impressed but he doesn’t say anything.

“Hey, y’know…” Baekhyun measures up the distance and tries to toss his balled-up sugar packet into Jongdae’s coffee. He’s way short. Jongdae didn’t even move to defend his drink because he knows how poor a shot Baekhyun is. “You’re like, my best friend.”

Jongdae laughs. “Where’s this coming from?”

“Nowhere.” Baekhyun hopes Jongdae makes a joke soon so he can look him in the eye again. “Just felt like saying it.”

“Well, you’re mine too.” Jongdae pulls out his wallet. “I’ll get lunch if you pay for pool later?”

“Sure,” Baekhyun says, and Jongdae stands and goes to the counter.

Baekhyun’s pretty sure the guy that just walked in and sat down at the table in the corner was in the same meeting as him on Thursday. It’s hard to tell when he’s in a t-shirt instead of dark suit and there’s no product in his hair, but Baekhyun definitely knows him from somewhere. He’s pretty sure it was him who defended Baekhyun’s proposal to resituate half the windows in the building to let in more light in front of both their bosses, even though he can’t be much older than Baekhyun. He wonders if he should go up and thank him or if that would just be uncomfortable.

“Hey, ready to go?” Jongdae asks, coming back up to the table. “You should try my new dish while we’re at the games place. It’s called your ass and I’m gonna serve it to you on a platter.”

Baekhyun grabs his jacket from the back of his chair and follows Jongdae out the door. The streets around here aren’t too crowded considering it’s a weekend. It cooled down over the week but it seems the summer wasn't willing to let go without one final goodbye. It really is a beautiful day.

“Hey,” Baekhyun asks as they start down the street towards the station, “you feel that?”

Jongdae glances at him. Baekhyun is grinning, and Jongdae looks around the street wildly for the joke. “Feel what?”

Baekhyun angles his face up and closes his eyes, just for a moment. “Exactly.”

 


End file.
